Are you kind to be cruel?
by Nonsuch
Summary: Dreams can be crueler than you think...


Once upon a time there lived a girl beloved by all for her beauty, and she lived a brief happy life unmarred by pain or the burden of responsibility.

The girl had been christened Sarah as she was held wriggling in the arms of awkwardly posed parents, many distant years before. But things change. It was a matter of a few short years before Sarah was accompanied by no one but her father. Her father grew lonely with no one but his little girl, her odd ways and little habits for company, and so he married again.

Sarah's new mother was an object of hate. For she was the usurper to a role no other than her darling mama could possess. The hate swelled and raged with the birth of a child, a brother who wails and cries seared through her like fire, fanning the childish rage she directed towards her blameless baby brother for the absence of those truly responsible.

But when Sarah was fourteen, things changed yet again – this time for her happiness. She woke up one morning, stretched wide and padded towards her mirror. The hate was numb. She felt content, happy in herself and secure in that she was capable of achieving what ever she should wish for. She never knew why.

By the close of her fourteenth year Sarah would spend every evening sat before her mirror – and she would simply _stare_.

She would gaze into the mirror, her mouth spread out in an 'O' of awe for the beauty she had failed to notice before. _It_ was beautiful, that much she could tell – but she was never to be sure of what it was she was seeing. She would see a girl, yes, that much was undeniable – but exactly who that girl was evaded her. She would blink her eyes; rub them in a vain attempt to see without her vision blurring or distorting to that of another – but nothing worked. Her vision was always doubled up, as if another hid away in the shadow behind her. All she ever saw was a fleeting glimpse from the corner of her eye as she would leave the room. It was a shadow whose eyes never left her own.

But it was there, despite how exhaustively she coached herself into ignorance of its presence. She allowed only the raw pride and the soaring ambition to remain as she shunned the fear of what she couldn't name.

With a first, lazy glance, it would be the simple figure of Sarah Williams she would view, casually dressed, tired eyed, long hair lying in loose rebellious strands down her shoulders – but the next, it would change to something that enchanted her in the way a shining bauble would a wonder struck child. She would see herself anew, tilting her head proudly in affirmation of her standing, dressed flawlessly in a glistening white dress that sparkled and shimmered with a strength that put any lofty star to shame. Her hair was faultless, an intricately arranged web of curls bouncing prettily with the slightest, most elegant of steps her image took.

But Sarah Williams would always find if she were to touch it, to gingerly allow a finger to brush against the clothes that she wore, to twist a curl tightly around her finger, all of beauty would vanish. The silks and the satins would be replaced with cotton shirts and the exquisitely spun hair straightened out to fall long and lank against her back.

Sarah found that she stopped caring after a time. She would simply dip a flawlessly shaped hand into her polka dot make up bag, removing whatever it was she needed to make herself as beautiful as she knew she could be. She grew to know love; she would happily sit before her mirror, pouting and batting her lashes, twisting her hair into jarring styles and be happy with whatever it was she saw before her because she took no greater pleasure than the vision of her own face.

The girl was clever, intelligent, and she put her knowledge to its best use. She finished high-school with flying colours, she beamed in the photos, danced past midnight at the prom, was resplendent in a gown spun of silver to be crowned with a flurry of applause Queen of that single, fleeting night – but everything would always be lacking. She had no idea why, it was an anonymous, distant sense of dissatisfaction. She could never pin it down.

Sarah Williams grew up. She went to college, dated seriously for the first time in her short sheltered life and held all her lovers in disdain, dismissing them were they to indicate any shadow of imperfection. They were always too short. Too untidy. Too ugly. None could satisfy Sarah, posed like an idol, surrounded by throngs of cooing admirers, who would plead with her for a word and lavish her with attention and all the gifts they could afford only to be ignored with a steely indifference.

She became yet older, graduated with distinction and was put in the paper in acknowledgement of her achievement. Sarah cut the article out, neatly pasting it into a spangle covered scrapbook to add to her collection of cuttings and snippets of articles that did so much as mention her name.

Sarah took to the stage and charmed and enchanted all she met with a beauty none of them could place. She became everything she ever wanted to be, an actress acclaimed from coast to coast for her presence and command of the stage.

She would walk into a dressing room after every performance and find it packed with bouquets, the scent of a thousand flowers hanging nauseatingly thick in the air. Ribbon topped boxes of luxury chocolates she rarely touched were stacked in tottering piles, left to rot for she always had something better to hand.

She became a model alongside her acting, a role she was perfectly suited to. Her skin was like that of a lovingly wrought marble statue, a snowy pale with a rosy flush brightening the cheeks, her brown eyes were flecked with green and captivated all who met her. She was a woman whose smiles broke hearts and whose brief bouts of attention were coveted as a blessing.

Sarah Williams had the perfect life by the time she was a young woman. She was married in a blur of white lace and rapturous applause and deafening cheers when they emerged beaming widely after speaking their vows. Her husband adored her without restraint and had more money than either of them could ever use. She came to have two rosy cheeked children who picked her roses in the garden and tiptoed around her so as to not tease out her passionate temper. She had a menagerie of pets, from shaggy haired sheepdogs and tabby cats to vipers in elaborate showcases and brashly coloured parrots chained to their perches for her pleasure, to satisfy her fleeting whims and the desires that never remained set in stone.

One day, Ms Williams as she insisted to be known for her name was of infinite more importance than that of her husband's, demanded chocolates with her name piped on them in pink icing. In italics. The next day they were sent back in disgust for being the wrong flavour.

Sarah Williams would lounge on richly upholstered furniture of mauve and violet silk, a mirror clutched in her hand and bask in the reward for the victory she never knew she had won.

Sarah was to pass away when she was twenty nine. No one knew why. The doctors mumbled about the cause being heart failure, a tumour, cancer anything to quash the stream of malicious gossip and the rumours. The papers were aflame with bouts of sordid speculation. Page after page was churned out by rote over the incontestable certainty of how her death was related to drugs, of how a string of scorned lovers were suspects – lovers she turned her back upon without the slightest twinge of guilt. The papers who had previously feted her as a goddess labelled her vicious and unfeeling. They gushed excitedly over the profit to be by so many from the tragic demise of the world's most infamous actress.

So ceased the life of the most loved woman of her lifetime.

* * *

There would always be another watching, every single day as she preened over her reflection and dazzled herself with her own smile. There was a mourner no one noticed at her funeral. He was amused by her performance, smirked at the sight of her coffin borne past him in a gilt carriage as he swept away. He found a sense of nostalgic delight at how she had taken to the glory he had lavished upon her as if she had been born a goddess amongst the heavens. Even in death, the pride was never allowed to die.

For once, his sweet little Sarah had played her part to perfection. She was helpless in death. She was no longer able to hurt him. He should of felt glad for her life led ignorant and unaware of her existence being that of a prettily made up dull eyed puppet with the Goblin King pulling at every string to inspire every single step.

Instead he felt nothing. He was more cold and remote than he had ever been for he had seen the only creature to ever make him feel rage, fury, passion die to fit to his design for reclamation of his senses.

He had been generous with his wrath for his humiliation, for how she scorned him so totally ignorant to his desires and his sincerity; he had suffocated her beneath an illusion of happiness and never been as vengeful as to torment her with tangible visions of what he was too proud to offer again. He had given her all she had ever wanted, his poor, pale angel lying lonely under carelessly strewn shovel loads of earth died with a smile.

She was his sad little Sarah, who was always alone with no one to talk to who would listen except herself. So he had awarded her with throngs of admirers who hung onto every word that dropped from her lips.

She was his pathetic, precious Sarah who had cried herself to sleep at nights for the mother who despised her to such a degree she had walked away. So he made her grow to love herself, he made her as vain and as proud as he was so she would never again experience the remotest twinge of inadequacy. He heaped her with all the love and unfailing attention she could ever demand, he gave her a family so devoted to her they were blinded to her blatant faults – her vanity, her callous indifference and her detachment from the hardships of reality. A detachment resulting from how he had seen to it she never had to face a second's suffering.

She was his beautiful, tragic Sarah who could never bear to imagine what it would be like to grow old and lined, to see her children grow and have children of their own as she would be abandoned yet again. He had listened attentively as she spoke casually of how she would rather die young than grow too feeble and weak to walk. So he had seen to it that she was dead before she reached thirty. He ensured she would never wake to the trauma of the sight of a single wrinkle marring the skin he so ached to touch.

No one can ever dare accuse the Goblin King of cruelty.

* * *

Ohh - a oneshot! Haven't written one of these in a while. Sorry if it's confuisng - but hopefully it's on the right side of ambiguous! This is one of the few things I've written that's totally serious, not even any digs at Jareth here! A miracle!

I really appreciate feedback, espeically for more 'out of my comort zone' things like this, so please review!

Oh yes, Thursday's Child is being edited now, and Simplciity's diary is getting written - only very slowly ;). I am in fact looking for a beat to check the grammar for me after I've had a first more narrative based check down, so if you're interested mention in your review of PM me and I'd be extremely grateful.

Hope you enjoy it!


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